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Two former Parramatta Eels players are accused of harbouring semi-automatic weapons and possessing more than half-a-million dollars in cash after dramatic arrests in Sydney's Centennial Park yesterday.

Hoddle Street massacre: Thirty years on, the details of that night still chill

The memory can fade over thirty years, but not the memory of that night.

Not the memory of Sunday night, August 9, 1987.

Having finished presenting our nightly news, I was sitting in the newsroom compiling the newsbreaks for that evening.

In the background was the usual chatter of the police scanner that sat near our Chief of Staff desk.

The night had the hallmarks of something sinister, something we only hear about in America.It soon became apparent there was bloodshed on almost an unimaginable scale.Thirty years on, the details of the Hoddle Street massacre are still fresh.

Soon after 9.30pm, the chatter became frantic, the solitude of a Sunday night in Melbourne exploded into sheer chaos as an untold tragedy took hold.

It would be known as the Hoddle Street massacre.

Julian Knight, a 19-year-old former soldier with a penchant to kill, would become the most despised man in Victoria.

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The phones in the newsroom began running hot with residents from around the Clifton Hill area reporting gunshots. The calls were clearly out of the ordinary. The initial fears were that two gunmen were at large, shooting randomly.

We immediately dispatched a camera crew to the area, with a warning to exercise extreme caution. This had all the hallmarks of something sinister, something we only hear about in America.

But this was Hoddle Street Melbourne.

Having dispatched the camera crew, we then broke into reporting whatever facts we had at the time, and urging people to steer clear of the area. It then became apparent there was bloodshed on an almost unimaginable scale.

Knight's bullets peppered cars, police helicopters, and claimed seven innocent lives. Nineteen other people were wounded in the massacre. Households sat in stunned silence as the shocking events of the night were reported.

Innocent people were being shot at as they drove down the road.

Adding to my personal concern, my sister was living just a couple of blocks from the scene of the shootings and, only moments before the first reports coming through, told me she was going to the nearby service station.

That same service station would become one of the murder scenes. Thankfully my sister avoided the massacre, but many others didn’t.

The death toll of Knight’s crazed rampage would be seven, with another 19 wounded.

Gina Papaioannou (centre), who was one of seven people killed by Julian Knight.

By this stage, we were running newsbreaks right across the country. Households sat in stunned silence as the events were reported.

I was still having to convince myself that this was happening in our own city.

The details chill me to this day.

This beast of a man took position on the side of the road, firing randomly, and even when police arrived at the scene, the shots continued to ring out from the range of weapons he had at his disposal. At one point, Knight took aim at police on the ground, and the police helicopter which hovered overhead.

Unfortunately many of the vehicles travelling along Hoddle Street also became targets.

Police would later say that Knight almost revelled in his massacre. He’d achieved his aim of killing humans. Innocent humans.

Knight remains in prison.

Seven lives were cut short… countless of other lives, those of the victim’s families, were forever changed.

Thirty years on, like so many others, I simply can’t make sense of the evil act carried out by Julian Knight that evening.

To this day, I shudder.

Knight remains in prison, new legislation drawn up by the State Government ensuring it’s unlikely he’ll ever be released.

Even during his incarceration Knight has been a serial pest, clogging the courts with countless attempts to beat the system.

It’s of some comfort, in the case of Julian Knight, that the system works.